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Thanksgiving is one of America’s most beloved holidays. And why wouldn’t it be? It officially starts the countdown to Christmas, it provides 4 days for everyone to rest, all the family comes together to share that feeling of gratitude, you have a whole day for crazy inexpensive shopping with Black Friday, and, of course: turkey and gravy.

However, we humans are just the worst. Eventually, we get tired of anything and everything.

With that in mind, our team at RealEstateAgent.com thought: hey, how can we put a spin on Thanksgiving Day? How do we write our traditional holiday article – have you read the Halloween themed recipes one and the 4th of July one? – with a twist? And that’s how we arrived at this idea: what can one do to make a different Thanksgiving Day while preserving the spirit of the holiday? Well, we have some ideas:

Make your own Thanksgiving parade

What if you tell all your family visiting that this year you guys will do your own Thanksgiving parade? Everyone will dress up and make their own remembrance of American icons and parade it through the living room or your backyard if your property has one. Include the pets, if you have one! It will make for the cutest Thanksgiving parade cars. To entice the participants, add incentives like prizes for the best costumes, and, of course, get the camera ready for “Kodak moments” – hey, go further and make a live transmission of it on Social media!

If your family is not that big, if it’s you, your kid(s) and your spouse, you can do a smaller version. Instead of being the “actors” of the show, just produce it with your kids as a playtime activity and make the toys the actors. Arrange a “5th Avenue” on the floor – or on the stairs, if you want to exercise before eating like crazy – and make Minions, Barbies and other toys parade. You can even reveal a new toy at the end, as the main parade piece. Your kids will go crazy!

Visit Plymouth, Massachusetts

Did you know the Thanksgiving weekend is one of the busiest times for airports in America? Plymouth Real Estate Agents do know that because it’s a great time for them to make business, since, instead of staying home for the holidays like everyone has been doing their whole life, a lot of tourists contribute to that statistic and travel to visit Plymouth, Massachusetts. The greatest Thanksgiving attraction there is Plymouth Landing, a living history museum founded in 1947 by Henry Hornblower dedicated to the preservation of the interwoven stories of English settlers (Pilgrims) and Native Americans. Besides looking pretty much the same as it was in the 17th century, you can still feast there with a traditional Thanksgiving meal served to holiday visitors. It’s a nice way to go back to roots and celebrate the holiday like it was originally conceived. A nice way to teach the children about it too. Cool concept, right? Could’ve easily been at our Best Museums in the USA list.

And the day before and the days after you can go to Boston – just a 1 hour and 15 minutes drive – and have fun in the big town. FYI: Boston is one of the best cities for singles so… going to Boston might make you “thankful” for choosing to go there instead of going to your parent’s house; what if you meet the love of your life and future family there?

Write to people from your past

On our Memorial day article, we talked about writing soldiers to let them know how much we appreciate them serving to fight for our freedom. Well, if Thanksgiving is the holiday for us to show gratitude for all the blessings showered upon us; how about making this “thankful” feeling made public? Or at least extending it beyond your next of kin.

The idea is writing cards or letters to long forgotten friends, teachers, co-workers and people to whom you are grateful for their help and guidance throughout your life. You have no idea how happy such a small thing like this might make them! Not everyone is fortunate to know someone cares about them; a lot of people don’t have a family and spend their Thanksgiving Day all by themselves. A small gesture like this one will make you happy (believe us!) and can mean the world to them. So make a nice card – if you have children, take a family picture – tell these people from the past what you’ve been up to and tell them how they are responsible for the nice things you’ve been achieving and how much you are thankful for that.

Share leftovers

Hey, nothing says gratitude like charity. A lot of families know that and even go through great lengths as volunteering to serve meals to people less fortunate. You can do it yourself too. Come on, you *know* that you prepare more food than you need. And most of the times you end up living off of those leftovers for the whole weekend. You don’t need to. You can prepare or buy something else to eat.

Why not gather the leftovers – complementing them, if necessary – and make several plates so you and your family can go out and serve it to homeless people and shelters that need it? There’s no shame in doing that. Did you know that this is how the concept of “TV-dinner” meals came to be? Yes, in the 1950’s – to take care of the number of leftovers, TV-Dinner company Swanson ordered 5,000 aluminum trays and loaded them with leftover Thanksgiving meals. It was such a success the company decided to commercialize them.

And hey, don’t get caught up with the food. The general idea here is charity. Thanksgiving means the winter is coming fast, so if you have clothes – especially warm ones – it’s a great time to donate to institutions and homeless people in need.

Above all, have fun with your loved ones and be grateful for all the blessings you have. Sometimes we get too caught up with our problems it becomes difficult to realize how fortunate we are for little things like having a roof over our heads, food to eat and people to care about. And that’s what Thanksgiving Day comes to remind us: that there’s always something to live for, and thank God for that! Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!